Wednesday, February 13, 2013

SIGNING UP: GOP Sen. Jon Woods signs ethics petition. He's on board also with related measures to increase his pay and allow him to serve longer.

Regnat Populus, the organization pushing a ballot initiative for stronger ethics laws in Arkansas, says a "comprehensive" ethics reform bill is expected to be filed today. The group will still be at the Capitol canvassing lawmakers for signatures on the initiated act to prohibit lobbyist freebies for legislators; impose a two-year waiting period (the Gilbert Baker rule) on moving to the lobby, and to prohibit direct corporate contributions to individual campaigns (but not to or from PACs).

Paul Spencer, head of the committee, says a filed bill is not a passed bill. Canvassing will proceed. Call the roll on signatories.

He promises more information later, but says there's emerging bipartisan legislative consensus in support of the Regnat Populus measure, in combination with changes in the existing term limits law and putting legislative pay in the hands of a citizens commission. The last would provide a way to pay increases on which the legislature itself didn't have to vote.

Republicans such as Sen. Jon Woods, also a sponsor of the amendment, are, in other words, supportive of better ethics if they can have higher pay and stay in office longer. The pay commission will come in separate legislation Woods plans. Term limits light would give this bunch 16 years or so total, where the limit is now six years in the House and eight in the Senate (with vagaries of reapportionment allowing some senators a few more years depending on the luck of the draw). A having-it-both-ways kind of measure. Stick around long enough to accrue all the power and all the perks, from pay and retirement to solid gold health insurance, while still claiming you support term limits.

As a matter of principle, I've always opposed term limits and supported higher pay for public service. As a matter of politics ....

Democratic legislators filed a batch of good government bills today and apparently more expected tomorrow and the days ahead. /more/

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Michael Wickline reported this morning that, for the second time in four years, Republican Rep. Mark Lowery had been cited by the state Ethics Commission for failing to comply with campaign finance reporting law. The minor penalty won't discourage similar in the future. /more/

In a nod to the increasing difficulty of finding and buying drugs to legally kill people on purpose, the legislature passed a law last year that made all information about where and how the state gets their execution drugs secret. For the long answer on why — and the dicey lengths states will go to in order to keep the machinery of death running — read this new report from Vice.com, "The Sordid Ways Death-Penalty States Obtain Execution Drugs." /more/

Matt Campbell, the Little Rock lawyer and author of the Blue Hog Reports blog, has filed an ethics complaint today against the Arkansas Health Care Association related to the nursing home lobby group's spending on a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at discouraging lawsuits against nursing homes and others for negligence and abuse. /more/

Monthly filings by committees attempting to statewide referred acts and constitutional amendments on the ballot show most with light financial support so far. Some of the highlights of Ethics Commission filings: /more/

New polling shows broad bipartisan report for campaign finance reform and stricter ethics laws in Arkansas. The polling was done by a group that advocates campaign finance reform and is tied to an effort to get an ethics amendment on the November ballot. /more/

Mike Huckabee's plan for winning the Republican presidential nomination is to convince primary voters there's a holy war underway against Christians.

Tens of thousands of Arkansans have been kicked off of Medicaid for failure to respond to an income verification letter. Many of them are eligible for the program according to the very data that triggered the letter in the first place.

Little Rock attorney and blogger Matt Campbell, whose knack for deep research brought down Mark Darr, Mike Maggio and Dexter Suggs, now has his sights trained on another worthy target. Today, he filed a 113-page ethics complaint against state Treasurer Dennis Milligan that includes 14 separate allegations.

by Benjamin Hardy and Lindsey Millar

Aug 20, 2015

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Next week a series of meetings on the use of technology to tackle global problems will be held in Little Rock by Club de Madrid — a coalition of more than 100 former democratic former presidents and prime ministers from around the world — and the P80 Group, a coalition of large public pension and sovereign wealth funds founded by Prince Charles to combat climate change. The conference will discuss deploying existing technologies to increase access to food, water, energy, clean environment, and medical care.

Plus, recipes from the Times staff.

Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) was on "Capitol View" on KARK, Channel 4, this morning, and among other things that will likely inspire you to yell at your computer screen, he said he expects someone in the legislature to file a bill to do ... something about changing the name of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

So fed up was young Edgar Welch of Salisbury, N.C., that Hillary Clinton was getting away with running a child-sex ring that he grabbed a couple of guns last Sunday, drove 360 miles to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where Clinton was supposed to be holding the kids as sex slaves, and fired his AR-15 into the floor to clear the joint of pizza cravers and conduct his own investigation of the pedophilia syndicate of the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

There is almost nothing real about "reality TV." All but the dullest viewers understand that the dramatic twists and turns on shows like "The Bachelor" or "Celebrity Apprentice" are scripted in advance. More or less like professional wrestling, Donald Trump's previous claim to fame.

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The Arkansas Supreme Court today upheld state statutes that mandate a court order to list parent names on a birth certificate other than the biological mother and father. The Court threw out the ruling of Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox, who found last year that the state Health Department had violated the Constitution by refusing to list both parent names of children of same-sex couples (the children of the three couples who were plaintiffs in the case were conceived via sperm donation).